A green card marriage is a marriage of convenience between a legal resident of the United States of America and a person who would be ineligible for residency but for being married to the resident. The term derives from the availability of permanent resident documents for spouses of legal residents in the United States, where marriage is one of the fastest and surest ways to obtain legal residence. Marriages, if legitimate, entitle the spouse to live and work in the United States, as in most other countries. In the United States, 2.3 million marriage visas were approved from 1998 through 2007, representing 25% of all green cards in 2007. Even if the non-resident spouse was previously an illegal immigrant, marriage entitles the spouse to residency, generally without the waiting time required for persons caught being in the United States illegally.
Legality
Most marriages between residents and non-residents are undertaken properly, for reasons other than or in addition to residency status. That said, the practice of obtaining residency through marriage is illegal in the United States if the marriage itself is fraudulent. A marriage that is solely for purposes of obtaining legal residence is considered a sham, and is a crime in the United States for both participants. Many of the arrangements are simple transactions between two individuals, often in exchange for money paid to the legal resident. In other cases the legal resident is an unwitting victim of a fraudulent marriage. In yet other cases the marriages are arranged by criminal enterprises, sometimes involving the complicity of corrupt immigration officials who accept payment for describing the marriage as legitimate in immigration paperwork.
Cultural references
The film Green Card is a romantic comedy that portrays a green card marriage. The films The Proposal and The Wedding Banquet portray a similar marriages of convenience designed to allow the main female character to stay in the United States.
In the TV showParks and Recreation, the character Tom Haverford entered into a green card marriage with Wendy, his Canadian college friend.
On the show My Name Is Earl, Catalina, a Mexican immigrant, and Randy, her dimwitted American friend, were forced into a green card marriage so Catalina could come back to America.
In the season 5 finale of That '70s Show, Fez marries Laurie Forman to avoid deportation.
In the two part season two finale of the sitcom Melissa & Joey, Joe proposes to and marries Elena, his Russian girlfriend who will likely be arrested upon her return to Russia after her company is shut down due to a Ponzi scheme that she was either unaware of or not a participant in. Joe marries her so that she can become a US citizen.
In the seventh season of the TV show Malcolm in the Middle, Reese is tricked by Raduca, his grandmother's servant from Eastern Europe, to marry her and study for the green card exam to gain her citizenship.
In the 7th and 8th season of House MD, House marries a Russian cam girl to allow her to obtain her green card.
